Streaming with Chess.com

As some of you may know, I host a partnered chess.com stream, Challenger’s Corner (originally named the Steincamp Show), and my audience has since grown quickly within the chess.com community.

Since it’s been a few weeks since I last discussed my stream on Chess^Summit, so I figured this week would be a good opportunity catch you all up on my new show! In this article, I’ll talk a bit about some of the most common chess mistakes I’ve seen, as well as dive into some of the behind the scenes work that goes into running a partnered stream.

Knowing your Audience

For the most part, I had been dabbling with streaming since the conclusion of the PRO Chess League season, sticking to a once a week schedule during the spring semester, and not really investing much time into my channels. However, after doing a hand-and-brain stream with professional streamer MikeySlice, I quickly saw the potential community-building opportunity I had in my own channel and through Chess^Summit:

As I hope you all can tell, when it comes to chess, I really enjoy coaching and making educational materials available online (for free!) for aspiring players. Knowing that chess.com is a big supporter of the work we do here at Chess^Summit, I wanted to create a bridge between the two platforms to help create a more interactive experience for both chess.com players and Chess^Summit readers.

Shortly after my stream with Mikey, I started to revamp my channel making it more searchable and more importantly, visually appealing. You don’t have to be a tech expert to run a Youtube or Twitch channel, but knowing how to use apps like Adobe Photoshop, OBS, and understanding some basic SEO goes a long ways towards promoting your channel. It took a few hours and a couple coffee shop crawls to crank out my base design and re-tag all my videos, but I’m really proud of the end product I’ve put together:

It’s become interesting for me to watch how important technical skills have become over the last five years in terms of promoting events for the chess community. If you have any interest in organizing online chess events, I’d strongly encourage you to start learning Photoshop now – it’s surprisingly easy, and after taking a 101 class on digital composition back in Pittsburgh, I’m basically self-taught. Oh, and it’s a lot of fun!

So that’s where I am – let’s talk some chess!

Karpov System Falls Short Again

If you’ve been following my chess.com blogs, you’ll know that the Karpov System offers Black a pretty simple set-up:

Last Monday night, I got to use a nice trap to win a piece out of the opening. As I mention in the clip, I’d actually had this position on the board (though somehow missed the tactic!!) in a tournament game years ago against a 1900+ rated player. People really miss this stuff! Since, I’ve used it as a opening trap in a fair number of games on chess.com.

This is a really simple tactic, but it shows how complacent your opponents can be in the opening – even in unfamiliar waters! Moral of the story: always ask what your opponent’s threats are, no matter what stage of the game it is in. Even though my opponent was 1300, I’m pretty sure if I gave him this position as White, he would be able to find the win. The game didn’t last much longer, and you can go through the rest here.

Make sure to remember this one for your own games if you decide to take up the English!

Punishing the Weak King!

I’m not sure why, but a lot of people have tried a particularly odd attack against me: moving the g-pawn in front of their king. While I enjoy getting free attacks against my opponents, it’s time to set a new rule: don’t play g4 if your king is on g1!

So I know what happens now – a bunch of you guys give me brilliant examples of exceptions, and try to prove me wrong. All I’m saying is, if Ben Finegold has a “never play f6” rule, I get to have a “please don’t play g4” rule! Let me try to convince you once, and I’ll get off my high horse:

How did the London System turn into this decisive position? I think the problems for White start in this position:

White’s position is actually perfectly fine – perhaps not advantageous, but certainly enough for equality.

So why did he play 16. g4 here? If you look at White’s position, the obvious question is: Well this is nice, but what’s next? Because nothing immediately stood out, White probably thought with all of the pieces developed, it’s okay to take some risks. In my personal experience, I find it best to use these moments to identify what your opponent’s motives are rather than exposing yourself. For that reason, I’ll recommend 16. a3, with the simple idea of stopping Black’s thematic Carlsbad pawn structure ideas.

Endgames are Cool too!

I’ve noticed that a lot of my opponents offer me draws as soon as we simplify into endgames. The most memorable was probably this pure knight endgame finish:

GMChessMaster1209 – Me, position after 40. gxf4

Funnily enough, I actually broke my own rule earlier in this game, in playing 16…g5!. However, this time the purpose was concrete, and was actually the engine’s best move! White offered me a draw in the above position, but I gave him one more test. 40…h5 41. h3? and surprisingly, White is now lost. Thanks to the simplification on the kingside, the game boils down to the superior knight after 41… hxg4 42. hxg4 Kg6 43. Kg2 Kg5 44. Kf3:

GMChessMaster1209 – Me, position after 44. Kf3

Now if there were no knights on the board, Black would have to move the king away and lose the f4 pawn (and the game), so my job is to defer my move to White. I played 44…Nc4, because White cannot recapture without losing the pawn ending. Knowing that White is limited to moving the knight between b1 and d2, I was able to simply march my knight over to g4 and win.

Even though for a brief moment White had equality, we saw how easy it was for me to take over and win because there were a lot of factors in the position. The key to improving at endgames is simple – practice, practice, practice. Always play for two results and look for your opponent’s weaknesses. In the next example, I use Jonathan Hawkin’s method from Amateur to IM, planning in steps.

As you noticed, even with the pawns all on the kingside, I was able to make the most of my bishop by following these steps:

1) Create a Passed Pawn

2) Activate my King

3) Fix my Opponent’s Pawns on Dark Squares

4) Sacrifice my Bishop to Reach a Forced Win

Abstractly, this sounds difficult, but if you noticed in the video, breaking down this endgame into steps was surprisingly easy – the knight is a really clumsy piece anyways… Don’t be afraid to play out a position you can’t lose!

First Ever Daily Tournament!

As I mentioned before, my stream community on chess.com has grown, thanks in part to our official chess.com club! I’m hoping to integrate content I create here on Chess^Summit with my streams on chess.com, and as regular readers, you are all more than welcome to participate. With nearly 100 active members in just a couple weeks, weekly arenas are becoming a regular event, and now, my channel is introducing our first-ever daily chess tournament!

Set to start on August 11th, this 3 days/move challenge will kick-off my channel’s off-stream activities. I’ll be playing alongside members of the Challenger’s Corner chess.com club, so if you want to play, make sure you join the club so you can register!

I got bumped from my usual Monday night spot for next week, so I’ll be on this Sunday night for an extra hour to play with all of you! Make sure to join this weekend’s online extravaganza as theChallenger’s Corner Club puts on its longest arena challenge yet!

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